For about two years now, I’ve been asking my friend Paul Jacobs to do an interview for this blog about the seemingly impossible job of making the organ accessible to The Masses. No, not those who attend masses, ahem, but the great unwashed masses themselves.
I am a delinquent, though, and have not sent him questions lo, these two years. Tomorrow night, Paul plays the first concert on the newly restored Alice Tully organ, which it was originally feared might not be returned to the hall. This concert is part of Lincoln Center’s White Light festival.
I have to give Lincoln Center, Paul, and Paul’s team a lot of credit for the way they’ve promoted this concert, which is completely sold out. Paul had a pre-pre-concert lecture a couple weeks back at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church on the upper westside, which was covered on the New York Times’ ArtsBeat blog. Lincoln Center also produced this really gorgeous video:
Ah! Yes! Thank you!
We’ve hosted Paul in Winter Park for two organ concerts over the past few years and I so wish there were more videos/podcasts/etc of him talking about this kind of thing. He is so articulate about the instrument and the music. I mean, I like the organ and all, but I wouldn’t say it’s my first choice for a Saturday night, but when he starts talking about it, even during a concert, it becomes so much more meaningful and interesting. Truly something I want to invest time and money in.
I actually wish that all artists would make videos about their programming in advance. I would be SO MUCH easier to for promoters to sell tickets if they could link to a YouTube video of the artists talking about the program/music/etc. It makes the whole thing so much more personal….why aren’t links to videos (and not just performance videos) standard parts of press kits now days? Isn’t that what YouTube is for? It often feels like the burden to sell a performance is on the presenter, not the artist – have access to more videos, podcasts, etc, would make it more of a shared responsibility.
Sorry for the soapbox, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.